umae

Old Irish

Alternative forms

• humae

Etymology

From Proto-Celtic *omiyom. Cognate with Old Welsh emid (whence Welsh efydd).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈu.β̃e/, [ˈu.β̃ɘ]

Noun

umae n (genitive umai, no plural)

1. copper
2. bronze, brass
   • c. 800, Würzburg Glosses on the Pauline Epistles, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 499–712, Wb. 12^b27

     .i. humae fogrigedar .i. crabud cen desercc

     (glossing Latin aes sonans) Brass that sounds, i.e. even devotion without charity

Inflection

Neuter io-stem
	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	umaeN	—	—
Vocative	umaeN	—	—
Accusative	umaeN	—	—
Genitive	umaiL	—	—
Dative	umuL	—	—
Initial mutations of a following adjective: H = triggers aspiration L = triggers lenition N = triggers nasalization

Descendants

• Middle Irish: uma
  • Irish: umha
  • Scottish Gaelic: umha
  • Manx: ooha

Mutation

Old Irish mutation
Radical	Lenition	Nasalization
umae (pronounced with /h/ in h-prothesis environments)	unchanged	n-umae
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Further reading

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “umae”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language